Microsoft really needs an antitrust smackdown with their repeated behavior.
So does Google though if we’re being honest.
Microsoft saying “stop using Google” is actually totally fine with me.
But only if they’re saying “go get Firefox.”
If you need more ammunition they recently also changed it so all links in Outlook opens in Edge even if it’s not the default browser. You have to go to settings and find an entirely separate default browser setting to stop it.
I switched to Thunderbird because of that bullshit. It’s getting worse. I’ll be looking for a good Linux distro for my next laptop.
I didn’t think that sort of thing happened anymore
It’s because of shit like this that I’m glad I switched to Linux.
I want to dual boot because I prefer Linux for everything but some niche games. Just never got around to it. This is pretty motivating.
Check https://www.protondb.com to check the status of compatibility of the game on Linux
My reason was that I had heard windows 11 was considering ads in their file explorer. Win10 already has enough prompts pushing edge and OneDrive. That, and many of my professors use Linux, and the ease with which they would install Python or C compilers was too much.
The only issues I had with dual booting is an out of sync clock (due to Windows using local time), and Windows wiped one of my Linux drives (I installed Windows second, so unplug any unused drives before installing Windows). The last issue I am still unsure what caused it, however I remember installing Windows and the next time I use Linux the drive is empty.
Do it. It’s not as hard as it used to be thanks to systemd-boot existing. I literally reinstalled Windows the other day and nothing happened to systemd-boot. GRUB, is a bit of a mess though.
This is a good way if someone really Like some games not working on Linux. Also it can keep work and fun separated.
I can recommend setting up encryption when installing Linux system to make Windows programs unable to access your files.
I wish I could. My gaming rig has an nvidia gpu and linux support really sucks because of the proprietary driver situation…
Steams new gamepad ui is a slideshow running at 5fps and I loose HDR so I have to remain on Windows for now. Every other desktop I own is UNIX tho.linux support really sucks because of the proprietary driver situation.
Stop listening to everyone online. The driver situation “sucks” because of ideologies (which I happen to agree with), but from a functionality perspective Nvidia’s Linux drivers are solid.
The same driver you install is the same driver they use in their half a million dollar DGX AI systems. And those systems don’t run Windows. Only Linux.
Those drivers are stable, but older. I get errors playing new games because my drivers are always 5-10 versions older than their windows equivalents.
That could be a consequence of the distro you’re using. I’m going to guess you’re using Ubuntu and maybe an older LTS.
If that’s the case you can switch to use the Nvidia driver PPA. It’ll give you the latest drivers.
He’s right about the new gamepad UI for steam though… it’s completely unusable in Linux from my experience (the old big picture UI worked fine)
I don’t know why you’re having that issue, but I have three systems with Nvidia cards (1080ti, 2060 laptop, 1660 laptop) that I use Steam on and the new big picture mode is entirely usable. It’s not perfect, and does hiccup someone’s, but it works fine.
I’m guessing the laptops are using Optimus and are maybe running big picture using the integrated graphics, hence being smoother on them. 1080ti I don’t know, maybe it’s just in issue with RTX cards or something. iirc it was to do with HW acceleration but not sure
Nope. I made sure the Nvidia card is used for everything.
A few others have mentioned Pop_OS! for their Nvidia driver support which is what I’m running too. I think I’m on version 535.93 or something like that. Most of the Ubuntu downstream (Ubuntu, mint, pop_os, etc,.) already include The proprietary drivers in their repos. Pop_OS is known for Nvidia support being a bit quicker than the others.
I’d suggest looking into dual booting (thats what I do, there are a few things that work better on windows). It’s super easy to set up, and it’s an easy low risk way to see if it works for you.
My gaming rig has an Nvidia GPU as well, and it runs mostly without any problems (I’ve had to manually update drivers a couple of times) on POP!_OS
Can you try to run the big picture/ gamepad UI and see if it lag? This my only real issue blocking me from switching back
I have a RTX3070 and I never felt any lag using big picture/gamepad UI in Ubuntu/Manjaro/Endeavour.
But you can Dual Boot and only use Windows for gaming. I did that initially
I got a RTX 3080 myself and no matter what distro I used the new gamepad UI lagged so much that it was unusable… maybe this has been fixed, I haven’t tried it in a while.
Also are you using x or wayland?But you can Dual Boot and only use Windows for gaming. I did that initially
Sadly I wont switch until this is resolved. But I use this rig only for gaming and navigate through gamepadui so I dont have to see Windows lol.
I use UNIX (Linux / macOS) on all other hosts.Use X not Wayland on NVIDIA GPUs. I’m running nixos on my laptop / desktop and big picture works without issues on both hosts.
4800hs + 1650m / 13900kf + 3070
I was using X in all of those. Now I am on NixOS and Wayland, but haven’t tried steam/big picture yet.
Manjaro/Endeavour.
Curious about why both?
Started on Manjaro but I was annoyed when they let their SSL certificates expire several times so I moved to EndeavourOS. Now I am using NixOS, and I probably stay with it for a while.
Nix is a good tool, but don’t think I’d personally want to give up the Linux FHS for it. Manjaro’s management does indeed have a somewhat concerning track record.
I’m guessing they’re distro hopping. People often jump from Manjaro to Endeavor to get a more clean Arch experience. This is what I did too, on my laptop a couple of years ago, and I’ve stayed on EndeavourOS since.
Do you ever run into upstream bugs, or Idk, package version incompatibilities, on Endeavour? The idea that the 2-week package grouping and delay might help avoid those is one of the main things that drew me to Manjaro.
I don’t currently own a gamepad, so I can’t help you. I hope somebody else can help.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
SteamVR exists on Linux. HDR is coming
deleted by creator
Running my Valve Index in Mint Xfce rn.
My man! (y)
Lookin’ good!
Just a reminder that if you’re using Windows, it’s not your property but Microsoft’s one
Right but licenses for pro are £200 RRP.
Don’t then beg me to use your services, just fuck off and let me use Windows how I want
No different than Chrome.
They’re talking windows in general
This goes for both chrome and bing: If a service is free, you are the product.
If a service is free, you are the product.
Linux?
Linux is just an advertisement to contribute to open source
Nothing Microsoft does is good. Nothing google does is good.
Choose an alternative that values you.
I don’t even value me, no corporation gives a crap. They want you and your recurrent income.
meirl
So don’t go with a mainstream option.
This “solution” completely ignores the volumes of software that is still only compatible with Windows. This is exactly the belief that Microsoft wants you to have: the illusion that you have a choice between Windows and other, equal alternatives. And before someone starts spouting off about WINE: it truly is a wonderful piece of software, and I don’t mean to disparage any of its talented contributors, but it will likely never even approach feature parity with Windows. I mean, it still can’t run the industry standard 3D modeling program.
This is always brought up but it isn’t actually that relevant. The 3D modeling profession is very small, hundreds of millions of general purpose computer users have no need for Microsoft.
I think that compared to video games, productive softwares, especially “industry standard” ones, rely more on Windows APIs at much more accuracy (and since Wine and its forks such as Proton have to rely on black-box reverse engineering to avoid copyright infringement), the API calls may not have the exact values 100% of the time which is more tolerable to videos games but much less on productive softwares.
Another reason is that most of these softwares unlike most video games are likely using many Windows’ quirks or bugs and are likely less using standard (such as WinUI, DirectX,…) or cross platform toolkit (Qt, GTK,…), making reimplementing the environments and libraries to run the softwares much harder.
Oh, and not even counting that many of those softwares may also use kernel-level DRMs which Wine/Proton/Crossover/… are only userspace level to prevent pirates. This was actually a problem in video games too when many video games, mostly multiplayer ones implement kernel level anticheats or DRMs, until Valve contacted the anticheat/DRM developer as well as the release and popular of the Steam Deck make developers care more about Wine/Proton compatibility, but even then there are some developers still don’t implement Wine/Proton compatibility or even worse ban Linux users for circumvent the artificial incompatibility.
I’m aware of the pitfalls.
Linux and Firefox with uBlock Origin.
I’ll settle for one that has a vague indifference to me.
Slackware
deleted by creator
Meh gamepass is cool for now. It will probably go up in price and become shitty when they get enough market share but until then it is super cool. And honestly I think bing/edge is now the better choice as a search engine/browser compared to Google/chrome. But no way I will give up my Firefox.
Edge (and that joke Brave) is chromium and that supports google’s control of the web. Firefox, or Safari on a Mac, don’t use google’s tech.
Firefox is the best for me. I thought chromium was open source though and not necessarily owned by Google.
Google controls it and allows people to use it so their own browser technology has the market share and can shape the web.
Denying google, a for-profit and evil company to shape a valuable public resource is dangerous.
There needs to be a legally mandated option to turn off all recommendations and tracking, and to require consent to enable it in the first place.
So pretty much just an extension of GDPR. Sounds good.
Or the courts should force MS to split off into an os company, an online services company, an office productivity software company, and a gaming company.
If we had an actual anti-monopoly/umbrella corporation law that would be badass.
Hell Amazon would tank instantly, since they just operate on pumping AWS profits into their loss leader (Amazon delivery) constantly.
So would Google to some extent. This actually sounds like a good plan. We should go back to the 90’s antitrust law. Before we made it toothless and basically unenforceable.
Fuck yeah! Lets do some trust bustin!
Sometimes Microsoft is such a turd… I’ve seen this thing posted several times, however I didn’t see the fix in this thread, so I’ll post it here. Sorry, I couldn’t find the Lemmy post that had the information on how to remove it, but I found one on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/computerviruses/comments/149x25h/bgaupsell_what_is_this_bing_popup/jp896s0
It’s basically a combination registry changes, and also directory modifications to prevent writing to the directory where
BGAUpsell.exeresides.It’s pretty shitty we have to do this. Please, hold all your “switch to Linux” comments, because they are stupid, and superfluous; I see that dumb shit all the time since I came to Lemmy.
Finally, a person with an actual voice. I feel like the, “Switch to Linux,” don’t realize they sound like, “Just get an iPhone people.” To me it all sounds like, “well if you don’t like being in this country then just leave.”
Linux is not the answer for all people the same as switching to an iPhone should never just be the answer.
I don’t get it. If a product sucks, why wouldn’t you switch away from it?
“Don’t suggest I leave my abusive husband, instead I’ll complain about him to my friends until he magically gets better.”
Christ, you guys sound like you have Stockholm syndrome.
AutoCAD, Revit, Photoshop, InDesign, SteamVR.
Pretty much sums it up.
If the alternatives are not there or lacking then people can’t switch. If people don’t use it and contribute (e.g. reports, donations) then it is difficult to justify creating alternatives.
This is not a stalemate however. It is a slow transition of pioneers frustrated with the status quo.
I’ll add Visual Studio.
And, no, VS Code is not a comparable replacement no matter how many extensions you add. I say that as someone who uses VS Code for almost everything…except C#.
Yep, definitely have to pick the right tool for the job. If you use these things, you’re stuck with Windows. Would be nice if you could install needed software on whichever OS you choose.
I’ve been running Linux on all the machines I own for years, but I still have to run Windows for work. Not everyone can just switch and I doubt there are many reading this who are unaware they could switch to Linux (or Mac, BSD, etc.).
Oh I also have one MacBook running MacOS because Apple decided to only allow iOS development and parental controls, of all things, on Apple devices running Apple software.
Yes MS and Apple suck but it’s not as simple as “just switch.”
Agreed. You’re making compromises no matter what you choose as an OS.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Penguin sighing noises.
But I like being superfluous…
What if I suggest switching to BSD?
BeOS is best OS ^^
I did try out Haiku a long time ago. I wonder how that’s doing.
Only HardenedBSD.
I did this with the registry edits on my personal computer. However. This does nothing at all to help with those of us still seeing this stuff on work computers or places where we are not the administrator.
As usual, it’s only Big Tech that’s able to compete with Big Tech. They all love to throw their weight around when they can, and join forces when it’s convenient.
Neither corporation should be defended or trusted with your data.
The only thing that’s kinda funny here is the irony of Microsoft tryna poach Chrome users into their own… wait for it… Chromium-based browser.
Both of them also like to lease out their software and not actually let you own anything, expecting you to be happily complacent.
Well Windows 11 got me to use arch, for which I use btw
I tried installing arch but it would tell me there’s no such thing as vda or something I looked it up but found no answer so I switched to pop!_OS
Love pop!_OS, Manjaro is a really cool and good fork of Arch that’s easy to install if rolling distributions are something you’re interested in
seems like a good idea to try it out, thanks. :D
Know how to tell which Lemmy users are running Linux? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
Sometimes I doubt my OS choice … but then suddenly microsoft reminds me why I chose it ;)
Coworkers have been complaining on Teams all day about how the Bing bar is suddenly showing up on their desktops. When did Microsoft stop giving a fuck about businesses? I wish to fucking god we could run Linux on our work machines.
I am so glad it wasn’t just me! Like the article said, I legit thought I had some sort of malware on my machine. Which I guess is true, they just call it windows. I really only use my machine for gaming and every time I’ve tried to switch to linux I had all sorts of compability issues.
Open question to all. Is SteamOS all that it’s cracked up to be? I’m still gonna have game by game issues right?
The only machine you wanna be using SteamOS on is the Steam Deck. Use a standard Linux distribution like Ubuntu if you’re gonna do it on any other machine. The reason being that the version of SteamOS for generic PCs is horribly outdated, and the one on the Deck is very much built exclusively for the Deck’s hardware.
Gaming mostly works out of the box with almost all games on Steam on Linux (SteamOS is not special in this regard) but there is an important caveat; be careful of games that use anticheat software - some work but others do not or may trigger bans. Check ProtonDB for your specific games to see if there are issues.
I use KDE Neon as my daily driver (LTS Ubuntu + latest KDE, which is the desktop environment the Steam Deck uses).
I haven’t had many issues. For context:
-
I have to remote in to my work computer from home. I do that with Parsec, which I have via a Flatpak. Parsec has no issues and works identically to Windows.
-
I also have to use a specific VPN. This VPN requires a separate program on Windows, but in KDE it’s baked into the OS.
-
Zoom is also a Flatpak. It has a few bugs that don’t exist on Windows - namely Zoom likes to steal window focus whenever the host joins or someone shares their screen.
-
I also installed Flatpak Steam. I had to use Flatseal to give it more access than it had by default, but that was easy enough. You can go through your OS package manager but since KDE Neon is built on Ubuntu LTS those packages don’t get updated frequently.
-
Most games run fine. Performance is usually a little worse than Windows, but I can still generally hit 60 - just with more dips than Windows has. Satisfactory and Jedi Survivor are the only games where I have seen noticeable issues compared to Windows. Baldur’s Gate runs fine.
-
Some games are borked. These are usually games that rely on anti-cheat or intrusive DRM.
-
Running Windows programs can be tricky. Wine isn’t intuitive to use. I usually use Bottles, but sometimes Bottles doesn’t get the job done and I have to fall back to Lutris. Lutris is hard to use but generally pulls through. These are all Flatpaks.
I maintain a Windows installation on an old 2 TB NTFS hard drive. Linux gets my 4 TB SSD, but I’ve symlinked my documents folders to the NTFS drive so I can share things on Windows and Linux.
Sometimes I need to boot into Windows. Generally this is if I’m having issues connecting to my work computer on Parsec (these issues happened on Windows as well), in which case I need to fall back to RDP to go check on my work computer. My employer blocks me doing that from Linux, so I do it from Windows instead.
Otherwise, I usually boot into Windows to play Satisfactory, because it doesn’t run well on Proton. Satisfactory’s Vulkan renderer seems to implode on Proton as well for some reason; it causes flickering on X and crashes Wayland entirely. The DX12 renderer works but it just isn’t as fast as it is on native Windows.
That said, I rarely boot into Windows. Maybe once every 2-3 months? But not beyond that.
-
SteamOS is mainly for the Steam Deck not regular PC or laptop. For a gaming distro I would recommend one of PopOS, Manjaro or Garuda.
I suggest grabbing the live image for each of them, booting it, and seeing how it feels without committing to anything. I usually test to see if everything works out of the box on the live mode — music, video, network shares, wifi, any peripherals you might have like headphones, fancy mouse or keyboard etc.
Thank you for the suggestions! I mean, the SteamOS was really my only touch point for linux gaming, I haven’t paid attention much to linux since trying wine out like a… decade ago? I’ll give those distros a look and see what feels right! ♥
Basically a good distro + Steam is similar to Windows + Steam, with all the proton stuff and the same (optional) big picture mode as the Steam Deck. It’ll handle setting up most games for you real nicely.
For a DE personally I love Plasma; xfce or Cinnamon would be my next choices. I don’t understand why so many power users like the modern gnome (Ubuntu default)
Random other tangent: I really miss the old Big Picture mode. Few things about the new one are good, but most is worse and a few things are relatively broken still. I know I’m in the minority thinking that though
As a recent penguin I don’t get the gnome thing either. To each their own and whatnot but to me it just reminds me of the weird themes from the early 2000s. I clicked into plasma loved it.
But, you know, it’s Linux. So I can try gnome and tweak it anytime I want to see if it grows on me. Love it.
Pop_OS is the least maintenance intensive of the three, from my experience - if that is a concern to you
I use a steam deck for about 2/3 of my gaming and I rarely have issues with games. That said, I mostly play indie games, but there is so much of my library that is supported that I’m never going to run out of things to play. Proton has really done wonders for gaming on Linux. Are you wanting to play multiplayer games or brand new releases? Or are you more of the patient gamer type?
I wouldn’t run steamos on a full desktop, but you can still get a lot of the benefits just by using steam on Linux. Definitely recommend trying it out.
Oh I am definitely a very patient gamer, my GF talked me in to baulders gate with her. But it’s been years since I bought something new. The majority of my steam library is indie stuff. I poked around on ProtonDB and it looks like 70% of my library is rated highly. So I am thinking this is a serious option for me. Gonna give days or two to think on it before committing to the hassle of a dual boot, but all these tools and comments are giving me a lot of peace of mind to try.
deleted by creator
That’s why they try to sell Windows 10 Enterprise instead of professional. You can block most of that in Enterprise.
I got that popup the other day. I’m this close to switching to Linux
Microsoft IS the malware
The malware’s coming from inside the operating system 👀
I did 2 months ago. The OS is truly awsome but many many software are just inferior to the windows version. For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page. You have to do it in two separate software or with a CLI application. I’m a daily anydesk user, I have license as well, their console is broken on ubuntu (or just gnome, not sure). I had to weed out certain things from gnome from a javascript file so I can use my PC while anydesk running. So depending on what you want to do it can be a very good experience or a borderline hell trying to replace your basic software with something worse. I will not give up at this point and I stand by it it is not linux’s fault, however you are not just using an OS but many software on that said OS and many of those software will suck. Fortunately things like Photoshop no longer an issue as you have Photopea in the web browser. Web3 is really helping linux out.
For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.
Unfortunately, pdf signing is problematic still on Linux, I use it as a daily driver and found a compromise with existing functionality. You can try okular, which is able to sign PDFs without altering them, but has a huge signature block and doesn’t permit adding a scan of a signature. My workaround: I created a stamp in the PDF reviewing tools with my signature, I can place that on the document and then sign it afterwards. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for pre-signed PDFs as it will alter the signed version.
Alternatively, LibreOffice Draw can sign PDFs, but also can’t insert signature scans (yet, there’s an open feature request) and is sometimes not understanding when PDFs change to landscape, in general it’s not nice to render a many-pages document in LO Draw and hope that it won’t mess up the document upon signing.
For adding / removing pages, I agree - it’s a pity there’s no GUI application, but I have gotten used to qpdf / pdftk and they are quite powerful and more efficient 90% of the time. Still doesn’t excuse no GUI application, but it keeps me able to work.
Xournal++ is old, but it can directly write on PDFs with both pen tablet and scanned image insertion, and can probably add/remove/reorder pages too— Technically I think its file format links to/embeds the whole PDF file, and then probably exports a new one with stuff added on top, or something like that, but the end result is usually that you can directly edit the PDF.
Or do you mean some kind of cryptographic signing? Well, it looks like Adobe offers a webtool too?
I meant tamper-proof cryptographic signatures, yes. A webtool is absolutely out of the question if you consider that it means uploading your potentially confidential document to an enterprise like Adobe.
You can sign and remove pages using LibreOffice Draw
you can but it has many other issues as it is not a PDF reader. It has no bookmarks, every PDF is opened editable so if there are shapes or text you can accidentally move them, there is no continuous scrolling through a document it is divided into individual pages. PDF is simply not solved on linux at the moment.
Does your PDF Reader and PDF Editor have to be the same application?
No. I rarely edit PDFs. I sign them, bind them, reorganize pages, comment on them. I was an adobe x user then a foxit reader guy on windows, there you can do it all. There is a foxit reader for linux with fraction of the features and have crashed for me constantly (back to my original point that multi OS developments have inferior linux version) Ideally I would prefer a single software to manage my PDFs just like for example I prefer a single software to play my different format of videos.
For example there is no proper pdf reader that can sign a pdf and add or remove a page.
Xournal++ should be a proper PDF reader that can sign a PDF and add and remove pages. Haven’t tried doing the latter personally though. It looks a bit old and might be hard to find, but it’s always worked suspiciously fine for me and is still in active development.
The “Adobe Acrobat” brand apparently also has a web app for signing PDFs. This is like, the first web search result for “PDF signing”.
I’ve also tried Inkscape import as vector and then reexport, which works fine for visually signing single pages. Just make sure you render the text to paths on import, instead of converting them to SVG text— And don’t actually do this, because it’s kinda dumb, so just use Xournal++ or the Adobe website instead, but there are options.
Granted, depending on how your experience with Xournal goes, these options are indeed not as convenient or easy as they should be.
Web3 is really helping linux out.
No! This term refers to, like, three three different things already, all of which have largely been either practical failures or grifts. Prescriptivism is usually just pedantry, but HTML5 web apps aren’t even on that inauspicious list.
There are already solutions to sign a pdf or reorganize the sheets or make comments. My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. Like if you want to use paint and the fill bucket is in a separate application. Just makes no sense. I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
My point was its all a separate tool which defeats the point. […] Just makes no sense.
Ah, well, “UNIX Philosophy”, maybe. Each tool does one thing, and does it well, and it’s up to the user to figure out what they want to accomplish by using multiple tools together— Though it probably made more sense in CLI than in the GUI realm. I think it works for 95% of cases. I don’t want to need an entire office suite just to be able to make a mark on a page. But when you’re working a lot on one particular document (be it a PDF, video edit, source code, digital illustration, or whatever), then yeah, having a “complete solution” with an efficient workflow can be hugely important as well.
I honestly willing to pay for a complete solution I dont want it for free.
You could check if CodeWeavers Crossover, the money behind the WINE project, can run your preferred Windows applications but do it on Linux:
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility
Or maybe WINE will do it for free:
I use AnyDesk regularly myself and haven’t run into an issue aside from the dark theming of my desktop making some text a bit hard to read.
What’s the issue you’re having?
gnome has those little icon on the top bar and anydesk also creates one while running. That little icon created a big unclickable are in the corner of the screen and i could not close my full screen windows. I had to delete a javascript file from gnome that places those icons in the topbar to solve this issue as anydesk has no setting to hide it.
That’s actually an Ubuntu specific problem then, since vanilla gnome doesn’t come with tray icons
Ah mate, 2 months in going full endeavour OS, not looked back. Not perfect, but very close to now and all my devices run it, its amazing.
I switched to EndeavourOS a few months ago after using Kubuntu exclusively for almost a decade. I’m never going back to Ubuntu.
Out of interest do you feel that Kubuntu and whatnot feels very much corporation run now - like its coming close to Microsoft version of Linux?
Kde neon user here, so kubuntu with latest kde apps.
No not even close. I can turn off any reporting and tracking. Yes cononical is moving more and more towards snaps but i can always just download and use the deb or flatpack
Remind me, snap uses that partition for the application right?
Sorry I’m sort of catching up on a few years out.
But then you lose the benefit of the package manager, which is like 99% of the convenience.
Lots of linux communities on lemmy.
Or there’s ReactOS: https://reactos.org/gallery/
deleted by creator
Is it actually something usable? I don’t know of many active users of it.
Depends on what you want to use it for. Run age-old hardware requiring age-old NT-only drivers? Sure. Run modern games? Forget it. And for the age-old hardware stuff (think control board for an electron microscope or something) people usually use FreeDOS, the number of devices that specifically need 32-bit NT is comparatively small. And that’s if they even upgrade at all often it’s just easier to slap an RPi in front of ancient hardware to isolate it from and adapt it to modern surroundings (but yes mainboards with ISA slots are still getting produced, electron microscopes are expensive).
I remember feeling like this, then I made the switch and I haven’t thought about it again
I installed Pop OS on my laptop since it’s pretty gaming friendly. Between that and the Steam Deck, Windows 10 might be my last version of Windows for personal use.
It’s in Windows 10 now too
Peachy. Thanks for the heads up. I haven’t noticed anything intrusive yet.
Pretty impressed at just how many notifications, popups and systems MS creates to continually try and funnel you into bing. At some point it moves past being annoying and now I’m just surprised at their tenacity / endurance
That and fucking OneDrive. Autosave isn’t able to function on O365 without OneDrive screw you microsoft
What’s so bad about OneDrive?
It’s a fine service if you want to use it. But I don’t want to use it so it should stop forcing it upon me.
You’re not going to make me feel bad for Google
Nobody is feeling bad for Google … if I was using duckduckgo, or anything else, I still wouldn’t want to see those popups. Then again, that’s one of the many reason why I stubbornly stick to linux ;)
Last weekend I talked my wife into trying Linux on her desktop on an extra SSD I had, she loves it. Loves that she can customize everything, says it’s faster (especially boot time), we put it on her laptop last night
What distro did you go with? My friend is showing intrest in trying Linux but I’m not sure what to recommend him. I use more advanced distros myself but I want it to work well for him OOtB while also not requiring any tinkering. I’m think of either some ubuntu-flavour or fork, like Kubuntu or maybe Mint.
Mint is for sure a good place to start. I personally run EndeavourOS with Cinnamon desktop and it’s been more trouble-free than anything Ubuntu based I’ve used (shocking, I know).
Interesting! I used arch for about 2 years on my gaming rig and it worked fine but I was worried if he went with something based on Arch that he would eventually run into issues due to not properly maintaining it (avoiding partial upgrades for example). But I’m probably overthinking it. If he sticks to a GUI for installing and updating packages and avoid messing with the terminal initially it should be fine.
I will add EndeavourOS to a small list of recommendations (rolling vs point release) so he can decide for himself.
Mint and PopOS! are the ones I’ve heard thrown about for “Users First Distro” ever since Canonical decided to do… whatever the fuck it is they’re doing to Ubuntu proper.
I’m using Mint now, and have exactly one complaint: I don’t like the default Cinnamon Firefox icon so I changed it, but every time there’s an update to Firefox it changes back. All things considered, that’s nothing to worry about.
Can’t go wrong with mint, I’ve been using it for years.
